1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of decorative lighting, and more particularly to an electro-luminescent (EL) light panel or strip having different colors and patterns, and to a method of making an electro-luminescent light strip or panel having different colors and patterns.
2. Discussion of Related Art
An electro-luminescent light panel or strip is a flexible enclosure which contains an electro-luminescent material, phosphor being a typical material, capable of emitting light when an electric current is discharged into or applied to the material.
An example of a conventional electro-luminescent light panel is shown in FIG. 1. The panel shown in FIG. 1 includes at least two protective layers and/or coatings 1,2,10,11 on each exterior side of the structure 1,2,10,11, electrode 3 and 8, leads 4 and 10 connected to the electrode layers by a bus bar 6, and a phosphor layer sandwiched between the protective outer layers and in contact with the electrodes.
Such light panels have conventionally been limited, for reasons of cost and manufacturability, to a single color per panel or strip. While multiple colors are possible in such a panel, the multi-color effect can only be obtained by adding additional coatings or layers to the outside of the panels, which greatly increases the complexity of the manufacturing process, and prevents the light panels, despite their inherent attractiveness, from becoming competitive with alternative decorative lighting arrangements, including incandescent lighting, light emitting diode arrangements, and neon or fluorescent lighting for most applications.
The problem of cost involves not only the cost of manufacture, but also the materials costs of the light panel itself and of the multiple coatings conventionally necessary to obtain a multi-color effect. In the majority of applications, it is not necessary to light the entire panel or strip in order to provide the desired effect, but manufacturing considerations often dictate the entire panel be uniformly lit, resulting in higher material costs.
In addition to the above considerations, the use of bulk wiring in conventional electro-luminescent panel interconnections further increases their cost, and limits the range of potential applications. It is, for example, difficult to provide special effects such as motion or animation involving sequential turn on/off, chasing, or random fade-in/fade-out effects using conventional electro-luminescent panel arrangements, and thus LED panels are conventionally used for such purposes.
Finally, electro-luminescent panels have traditionally been limited to applications which make use of their attractiveness in the dark, the panels themselves being relatively plain and not particularly attractive unless lit. To-date, therefore, electro-luminescent panels have simply not been competitive with other lighting and decorative systems in all but a few narrow single-color applications.